[NLRS] Fw: Mounting omni loops to tower legs

[John P. Toscano]

Todd and Sandy Sprinkmann wrote:
>   On Friday, I'm going to be mounting the Par OmniLoops I have on the side of my house to a better location on the side of a 100' tower.  They are a 2-stack of 6m loops and a 2-stack of 2m loops.
> 
>   The tower guy has concerns about how having them mounted to a tower might compromise their pattern or change tuning drastically.  I called Dale at Par and he said that while I might notice the resonant freq. change a little, he emphasized I could mount the loops directly to the tower leg.  
> 
>   I'm asking anyone here who has experience with this matter to share their experience.
> 
>   The section of tower that we would be mounting to is perfectly vertical, so the loops would be directly above each other, per the instructions from Par.  I plan on keeping the current spacing of roughly 13' for the 6m loops and roughly 4 1/2' on the 2m loops.  I assume (always a little dangerous, hi) that if I simply put the 2m loops proportionately inside the 6m loops (the way I've seen rovers do it) that will be fine.  
> 
>   Just concerned about whether the loops should be offset from the tower a certain distance.  And whether if I go ahead and mount them directly to the tower leg, will performance change appreciably.

Hi, Todd.

I can't speak to your exact proposed setup, but here's as close as I can 
come at the moment.

I have a stacked pair of M Squared SQLOOPs (the predecessor of the 
HOLOOP that they now sell), and a 6 meter SQLOOP.  They are all mounted 
directly to a steel mast, 6M loop on top and the phased pair of 2M loops 
below it.  They mount directly to the mast.  They work very well in this 
configuration.  I was more than pleased to have them in a couple of 
contests when I had a broken rotor and couldn't point the beams, and I 
still find it very useful even now to use them for close-in contacts and 
to check in every beam heading at once during a contest to see if I'm 
missing anything.  (A quick flip of a switch in the shack toggles a coax 
relay outside and allows me to switch between the omnis and the beams.)

Granted, they aren't the identical loop antennas, nor do I have quite as 
much steel there as your tower represents, but I consider this at least 
empiric evidence that it should work out okay.  I'm sure that there will 
be SOME interaction, but it shouldn't be insurmountable.

Hope that helps a bit.
73 and good luck,
John (W�JT)